(ThyBlackMan.com) African American business ownership is the fundamental way to create economic, political, and social power and authority in our cities. Without ownership, and wealth we will always be a day late and a dollar short. We will keep wondering why we have no power, our prayer walks don’t work, and our kids keep going to prison. The best way, to create business ownership () is to model our urban inner-cities after rural towns that have had success. Many of you may not be familiar with rural America, but many of the small towns have features and challenges very similar to our African American urban core areas. This article will introduce you to the similarities between rural and urban areas and then focus on how some rural towns are becoming successful using entrepreneurship development models. It is my strong belief 
that using these models in our inner-cities can turn them into successful and powerful communities for African Americans.
Rural towns and urban African American areas share many similarities to each other. They both suffer from brain drain, the loss of talent to other areas of the state or area. They both tend to have a lower level of education and in many cases lower level schools. They suffer from lack of investment in their roads and buildings and have houses, parks and other features in decline. They can’t attract dollars and businesses into the area so economic growth is in decline or dies out altogether. For our rural areas this has led to a perpetual population decline causing many small towns to die out. For many of our urban areas it has caused urban sprawl, food and medical deserts, and dilapidated housing along with White and Professional Black flight to the suburbs.
Many of our “Black” areas of town in the urban core areas are known well across the city. For example, in Omaha we have North Omaha. It is roughly a two and half zip code area of the city that is home to roughly 60% of all Blacks in the city. In Omaha these zip codes are the only zip codes in which the majority of people living there are the minority. It also has the highest crime rate, the highest poverty rate, and one of the lowest education rates in the city. Those of you from other cities of any size probably can point to your “North Omahas” as you read this article. One of the key features of these types of areas are they usually have minorities as the dominant ethnic group of the area, and they have a rough geographic boundary that everyone can point to and identify. It is for this reason that I argue to truly do economic development that EMPOWERS African Americans in these areas strategies that have led to rural town turnarounds should be used.
I recently spent time in Ord Nebraska, a small town of about 2,000 not located near any major highways. I got the opportunity to hang out with their local economic development professional who previously worked in an urban area. When he came to the town he created a strategy of aggressive entrepreneurship development, coupled with reinvestment into the down town area, and leveraged the strength of the communities key assets to promote growth. Over the past 5 years they have worked with over 100 businesses, provided training and business coaching, and created a great downtown environment. For the first time in DECADES they have seen an increase in young people moving back into the city and an increase in the number of children in their schools. This is almost unheard of in modern rural America. This is just one example. In my research I have found that rural towns that take this kind of aggressive approach to entrepreneurship development have a much better chance to succeed and transform than those that do not. The same can happen in our urban African American areas. In part II, I will dig deeper in to the subject and show you how.
Stay Tuned for Part II – Black Power is Economic Power – How Rural Entrepreneurship Development Models Can Empower our African American Areas.
Staff Writer; Dell Gines
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